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Booyco
Using VLF technology underground, the Booyco PDS has proved its reliability in ensuring pedestrian safety.
As unstable conditions are the greatest cause of fatalities, predicting, assessing, and minimising this hazard is top of mind in underground safety developments. self-steers along a safe path, on-board scanners, combined with radio network infrastructure, are part of the system.
However, it is the Autopilot element of control that allows the machine to auto tram, dump, and return for operator control of the loading process, while machine speed can be regulated and boundaries at required points established.
The system also has features that reduce hazards in the working area of the machine, for example in the event of personnel entering, or equipment leaving the operations area while the machine is being controlled from the operator station. The system only requires a mine map to be loaded onto the server, and the system is designed to work within the mine profile. There is no need to drive a machine manually to‘ train’ the system initially each time routes or road conditions change.
Collision warning Local innovations are also coming fast and furious. The CSIR has developed a pedestrian detection system( PDS) that uses a range sensor to determine the distance of machinery to each identified person and tracks each individual to determine if and when a collision is likely to occur, based on a set of algorithms;
while Frank Schommer, Booyco Electronics engineer and developer, says that the application of very low frequency( VLF) technology in the development of underground safety equipment has been an important step towards realising the mining sector’ s objective of Zero Harm. VLF, says Schommer, is used to generate a magnetic field— based on low-frequency technology— around a vehicle; essentially an electric‘ fence’ that is independent of the material present in the immediate environment.
“ In other words, VLF technology allows this magnetic field to travel through obstacles like rock and water, maintaining the‘ fence’ at a constant distance from the vehicle,” he says.“ This means that the shape of the fence around the vehicle remains exactly the same, whether the vehicle is underground or on surface.”
Owing to their frequency, the waves are not deflected by walls or other elements of the environment; rather, they penetrate these objects, Schommer says.“ This allows our PDS to create this invisible fence around mining vehicles at a certain pre-set distance, depending on the specific application and the customers’ requirements.”
The corners and crossings in an underground haulage will not affect the
SEPTEMBER 2018 27